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“We’ve already got an immortal, a hybrid, and a witch,” Dane said with a shrug. “Sure, why not bring ghosts into it?”

Was it a ghost? If it was, the spirit wasn’t trying to hurt her. On the contrary, she felt it wanted to help her.

“It’s offering me its energy.” Juniper drew in a deep breath and exhaled, refocusing on the pot of water as she chanted once more.“Memóriám liquoris calefactus sum.”

Adriel and Dane chimed in, and they found arhythm. Harmonizing, as if singing, they chanted and started to dance, much like the indigenous people did when they called upon the rain.

Ruth was drawn into the kitchen by noise and energy.“Sing with us, Ruth,” Adriel invited, and the older woman joined in.

Juniper laughed as the water's energy vibrated with the gentle bubbles that preceded a boil. “Keep going!”

They chanted louder and louder until she yanked her hands back, the metal now too hot to touch.

Could she do it without touching the metal? How powerful were these words?

The air buzzed around her, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up. A surge of power flowed through her veins and streamed from her fingertips.

“Do you feel it? It’s everywhere!”

Her brain hummed, and her heart raced as vitality powered through her like a live wire, something electric shooting through every nerve of her body, moving through her veins and pumping into her heart faster than cocaine. A dome of power formed over the kitchen, siphoning more energy from outside.

Juniper became a great maestro of the elements, conducting an orchestra of energy that built to such a ringing crescendo she could no longer hear the others chanting—only the intense buzzing around her as the water trembled and the pot rattled on the stove.

The steady buzz rang in her ears as her pulse vibrated. Faster and harder, energy pumped through her veins. It pulled from the earth and traveled from the soles of her feet, where it pulsed into every muscle of her body. They generated so much power she seemed weightless as if she could float through gravity and time.

Steam billowed from the surface of the water as tiny bubbles raced to the top.

“June?”

The pull was magnetic and delightful. She couldn’t look away.

“Uh, Juniper?”

The glass trembled in the window frames and the doors jerked at the hinges. Invisible hands—dozens—pressed into her, lending enough power to lift her hair off her shoulders. The water started to hiss.

“Juniper!”Dane and Adriel screamed as more lights flickered, and then something popped.

Glass shattered.

Dane tried to grab her, but the invisible hands pushed him away, lifting her higher. He shouted, his words pulled into a howling vortex of energy that she could no longer hear. Her heart sped up as sweat beaded on her skin. The buzzing changed to a screech, and suddenly, the pot of water ruptured like a geyser.

“Look out!”

A burst of white-hot light exploded with a sharp whistle, and all went black.

CHAPTER 18

His limbs were nothing more than flesh and bone, too weak to do more than wiggle his fingers and toes, loosening and shifting the dirt one granule at a time. The tickle to his bare skin never stopped, nor did the tingle of new nerves forming in his regenerated cells.

Weak and emaciated, far below the earth’s surface, he doubted he’d ever see the light of day again. Tiny, silken grains of soil shifted, but the weight of bone-crushing pressure remained.

He roared in frustration, the taste of soil on his tongue and the grit of gravel in his teeth.

Mortals. He could sense their minds nearby—the ambulatory temptation of food taunted him from above. This surely was hell.

He was forever trapped by the weight of the earth, sentenced to this endless eternity of miserable life quickened by death, only to return to his wretched existence once more. He was nevergetting free.

Then, one day, an earthquake struck.